April 1 Maundy Thursday
I just about always know what time it is. I wear a watch and carry a cell phone. I have clocks in my house, my car, and my office. I hear the time update on the radio, and see television programs begin at the exact time they are supposed to. I watch the clock, I do time management, I try to be on time. I would say that with all of this practice, I feel fairly confident in my ability to tell time, except when I step into my in-laws’ house in Greenbrier. For a reason unbeknownst to me, there are multiple clocks in that house that all tell time differently. One glance around the open floor plan and you’ll see clocks that are a few minutes slow, others a few minutes fast, and an atomic clock that theoretically has the accurate time in between. There is even a pendulum clock which never gets rewound, suggesting that time has even stopped. This is the great mystery of the clocks in that house, that somehow it is the past, the present, and the future all at the same time.
You may have noticed that we do not have any clocks here in the nave or around the altar. We don’t put clocks inside the church. For one thing, we don’t want everyone to watch the clock and wonder how long the service is going to last, especially an evening service at the end of a long day. But there is another reason why we don’t have clocks in here – we wouldn’t know what time to set them to. Like those clocks at my in-laws’ house in Greenbrier, some would have to be fast, some slow, some stopped, and some on time. Because time in the church works differently than time in the world. When we step inside the church, we enter liturgical time – a mystery of the past, the present, and the future all present to us at the same time.
This might be Maundy Thursday on April 1, 2010, a little after 7 pm, but that is not all it is. In church time tonight, we delve into the past – remembering the last supper of Jesus and his disciples over 2,000 years ago. But we do much more than remember. We share a meal with similar bread and wine in real time, and know that God’s grace is at work tonight in our own gathering. And as we gather around the altar, we also look to the future that God has in store for us, knowing that our rituals in church somehow tap into that future. Tonight, we remember the past, we worship in the present, and we await the future. Time might even seem to stop as we brush up against the eternal.
A visit to that house in Greenbrier is disorienting at first since you never really know what time it is. But as it turns out, that is the charm of the place. When we visit, it’s like stepping out of time. We share meals and stories with family members and friends, we let the kids run around outside, and we simply spend time together. We feel refreshed, renewed, restored. We experience a grace that comes from letting go of schedules and clock watching.
Sacred time works like that, too. It can help us to open ourselves to an experience of grace we would normally miss. We step out of regular time and into a world where time itself is a sacrament. We hear stories of the past and hopes for the future, we share meals, and we spend time following the example of Jesus loving his friends. We are restored by signs of grace from the past, the present, and the future. Everyone needs some of this sacred time. It’s good for our souls.
Following our meal of bread and wine tonight, we will enter into the beautiful and solemn ritual of stripping the altar in preparation for the Passion of Jesus. Sacred time is particularly powerful in these liturgies of Holy Week. As we remember the drama of the past tonight and over the next few days, allow yourselves to experience sacred time. Be restored by the grace we experience as past events are brought into the present. And be renewed in the knowledge that God is not yet finished. Amen.